The present invention relates to a method for producing sliceable bread having an increased roughage content wherein a bread dough is made from bread cereal flour. The invention further relates to a storable ready-mixed flour mixture suitable for implementing the method of making bread according to the invention.
It is known that the roughage content in human foods is generally too low. The term roughage is here understood to mean all organic components in foodstuffs which are not attacked by the digestive juices of the human body. Generally, these are vegetable foodstuffs essentially consisting of cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin and/or lignin. The effect of such roughage in food is complex and its presence will result, for example, in the stimulation of the digestive tract into peristalsis and also in loosening the food mixture to be digested so that the digestive juices have easier access to the food to be digested and thus accelerate the diffusion processes.
There have been many attempts to increase the roughage content of human foodstuffs including attempts to increase the roughage content in baked goods. For example, German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,854,728 discloses a method for producing baked goods made essentially of bran where 2.5 to 15 parts by weight of a vegetable thickener, specifically carob bean meal, are added to the bran-water mixture to form a cookie. This German Offenlegungsschrift, however, is concerned with the production of a snack type product and there is no teaching of increasing the roughage content in sliceable bread.
German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,933,521 discloses a method for producing a bran product in baked form, characterized by the fact that the recipe contains cold-swellable lubricating substances such as tragacanth, alginates, agar-agar, carob bean meal, cellulose derivatives, cold-swelling starch and its derivatives. The purpose of these lubricating substances is to coat the bran and thus make it more palatable and specifically to take away its rough, shell-like, chaffy taste. The product produced, however, is not bread, and there is no disclosure relating to increasing the roughage content in sliceable bread.
British Pat. No. 1,507,867 discloses an edible bran product whose content of phytic acid has been brought into a water insoluble form by binding it to calcium, magnesium, zinc or iron ions. The product is essentially a pharmaceutical diet product and can be produced in powder, cake or bread form with calcium phosphate or calcium sulfate being used, in particular, as the phytic acid binder. There is no disclosure relating to making a sliceable bread from bread cereal flour having increased roughage content.
There have been prior art attempts which have been directed specifically to increasing the roughage content in bread, but they have not been successful in substantially increasing the bread roughage content. For example, it has been proposed in the periodical "Getreide, Mehl und Brot," Sept. 1980, pages 243-247, to enrich breads and small baked goods with roughage, specifically, by the addition of edible bran. Such additives, however, are limited to about 10 percent by weight, occasionally up to 15 percent by weight, since larger amounts worsen the sliceability of the bread as well as other properties, such as, for example, crumb elasticity.
The publication "Die Muhle+Mischfuttertechnik", in translation, The Mill and Feed Mixing Art, Volume 118, Jan. 22, 1981, No. 4, pages 47-50, discloses the production of small baked goods containing a "minimum" of 10% edible bran. Specifically, the publication describes whole grain rye bread containing 10% edible bran and small baked goods containing 10 to 15% edible bran including yeast-raised cakes enriched with roughage material up to 20%. The breads described are experimental in nature, however, and the publication generally indicates that, from a practical standpoint, the additions of edible bran are limited to 10% in recipes for breakfast cereals, bread, small baked goods and fine baked goods and that additions of edible bran exceeding 10% would be difficult.
For some time, the use of ready-mixed flours which contain roughage has been recommended for the manufacture of bread enriched with roughage. This has the advantage that deviations from the recipe become impossible and the baker need not purchase suitable roughage materials, such as hygienically acceptable edible brans.
In general, however, prior art attempts to produce a sliceable bread from bread cereal flour with a roughage content in excess of 10 or 15% have not been successful because of failure of the roughage material to properly bind to the bread.
The binding of the above-mentioned roughage material, for example edible bran, in a bread dough is more difficult the greater the amount of roughage material. It has been observed that it is possible to bind relatively small amounts of roughage material during the proofing process and particularly during the baking process. If the content of roughage material exceeds the limit of 10 or 15%, however, depending on the type and physical consistency of the roughage material, the binding is not sufficient and the resulting bread does not slice well, has low crumb stability, tastes dry and strawy, and cannot be covered with a spread in the desired manner.